City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Publications and Research Baruch College 2016 Translating History and Expunging Treason: Textual and Political Intervention in the Conspiracy of the Duke of Biron Adrian Izquierdo CUNY Bernard M Baruch College How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/bb_pubs/1009 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact:
[email protected] Philological Quarterly 95.3/4 (2016) Translating History and Expunging Treason: Textual and Political Intervention in the Conspiracy of the Duke of Biron Adrián Izquierdo y the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth, translation and historiography, both anchored in a common past and a venerable practice, were inseparable from the B 1 idea of nascent statehood in early modern Europe. As humanist scholars and politicians used the artes historicae as a method of dissecting the past to unravel the present, the translation of history became, in the hands of many European princes and states, a powerful political instrument for the deployment or emendation of contentious purposes.2 Since historical narratives were built upon Cicero’s definition of historia magistra vitae as well as on the Polybian premise of similitudo temporum, humanists read, quoted, and translated the Greek historians and their Latin imitators, and widely drew on their accounts and style